Fearless, Reckless Home xxx HappyOC
by missredwood
Summary: Happy and Danielle have stood by each other complacently throughout the years, their love for each other and their children clouding the ever-present problems that seemed to leave their relationship cordial at best. What will happen when both their demons catch up with them for good? Will it push their love to new heights like always, or finally destroy them?
1. Prologue

This story will take place starting at the present moment in the SOA story line, but will be greatly padded out with memories and retelling of how the characters came to be in their present situations. I will stay true to all SOA plot lines that have occurred, and all significant others that exist in the show will also exist in my story. I want this story to mold itself around what has transpired in the show, and not the other way around. I hope to take the story from season one all the way up to season 5, and hopefully as far as I can with the remaining seasons as well. I own nothing SOA related and am in no way affiliated with the show. I own only my character and the by-product of her world.

Cheers!


	2. Dissident

She remembered their house in Stockton like the very back of her hand.

It shouldn't have stood out the way it did. It wasn't their first house together, or the house they'd even raised most of their kids in. Yet her acute memories of it were painful and heartbreaking. It was like when you find an old perfume you used to wear, and the scent of it reminds you so much of that boyfriend you had when you bought it, it almost makes you sick. Strong scents had always made her sick. They invoked fear in her, hazy recollections of spraying anything she could to cover up the stench of pot in her room as a teenager haunted her. That kind of fear was cold and clawing.

She smiled at the thought of fear. When he had walked into her life, fear had become such an optical illusion. The more she had pushed past it to stay on his level, the less it had debilitated her. It was so wonderful, she remembered, when she finally realized she no longer based her moves off of the useless emotion. It had run her entire life up until him. Fear of emotional turmoil caused her to fold into herself, shutting the world out while she self-destructed. Fear of physical pain had caused her to lash out at anyone and anything, like an animal cornered, to state her strength. Happy's steady, laughing eyes had ambushed her the first time she locked hers with his. For all of his certain misgivings she skimmed off her first impression of his, she knew this for sure: he was strong, courageous, endowed with a certain humor that most wished for and trained themselves in the art of in order to make their lives more bearable. He walked with everything good and true on his shoulder, like a God& a Devil, daring anyone to break his stride. She had walked up next to him straight away, knowing as much as _needing_ to be by his side. If she didn't make it to that position of prominence, she was nothing.

But it was once she pushed past the banal and irking fear of her life, rising to meet him and his glory in a relationship, that their home in Stockton came into play. It was the second house they'd lived in together, the first being her own; one that she'd trashed from drug binges and squatting friends. When he had moved them into something nicer and more spacious, she had woke from a dead sleep the first night in it and cradled her head in nausea. After puking twice she had fallen back into her deep sleep without caution, knowing full well she was pregnant. Morning sickness was a inconsiderate name for it. She had always puked in the evenings during pregnancy.

This is what made their Stockton home so special. She experienced so many new things in it. Her body had changed along with her lifestyle. She had never been fully owned by someone, and had never thought she might experience such a thing. It both annoyed her, causing her to lash out and scream the way she used to when she was coming down, but their was comfort in her chains. They were heavy and made it hard for her to move to much to fast; hard for her to make rash decisions that ruined her. The lack of freedom was a blessing, but it came at such a steep price.

Danielle was broken out of her nostalgia while she bused tables at the coffee house she worked at some evenings when a customer began speaking to her. She couldn't help the look that crossed her face from his rude interruption, but quickly recovered herself and smiled pointedly, agreeing and promising she'd get him another espresso right away. It was so easy to work at leisure when you weren't working desperately. She had spent many years of her life, working hard in order to keep her head above water. She was taken care of now. She worked odd jobs to keep herself busy. She would've laughed in the face of anyone, rudely, that would've told her by age 29 she would have four kids and a husband that handled all the finances. But, like was so common of him, Happy swooped in and changed the course of whatever he touched without a hint of irony.

An hour later she stepped out back and smoked a joint before ambling to her car, her senses heightened to her surroundings and anything that might try to harm her, and she was raised to and trained to be. A year ago she would've smoked her joint out front before a bike roared to life up the street towards her. She would've gotten on the back, her body flush against the warmth of the man who loved her; who'd made her a lover and then a mother and then a monster. She would've kissed him on the neck, warm in the high they shared, smiled into him as she breathed 'take me home', where they would sleep under a pile of the children they created. A year ago, she would have predicted no alternative to her future. But tonight she was alone. She was more alone than she had ever been in her life, and she was only drifting farther.

_**A/N** Just a shorty and small scope into the characters and their relationship and where they stand right this second. I have a whole idea about how this story will play out and end, but I'm still putting together everything that pads that out! Will update soon.. Cheers!**_


	3. Weatherbeaten Soul

**A/N*** Thanks for the reviews! I've been struggling with how I'm going to format this, with there being a present day story line and a past one to tell all at once. Still trying to find a through-line with that. Hope you all enjoy... Let me know what you think, suggestions, anything- I enjoy reading it :) Cheers!**

_Oakland – March of '03_

_They met at a Bad Religion concert. She was 19, lithe and electric. He was older, humble and untouchable. The fervor and fever of the shifting bodies around them was nothing new to either individual; they both lived in a perpetual state of chaos in their own vastly different ways. She was born and raised out of disarray, and bedlam was all that was expected of her - the byproduct of a slow and easy Hispanic father and a determined and powerful Native mother. Danielle's dark skin flashed and glowed against her unendingly flushed cheeks and flashing smile, and her eyes rapidly fired notes of aggression, in direct contrast to her sweet and dreamy energy. Her curves and assets seemed too heavy for a girl so short and slender, but they uniformed her in a distinctly Latina way._

_How was he to walk anywhere but in her immediate direction? He was pulled to her, shallowly above all. She seemed easy and entertaining. She looked no different from the girls that frequented him and his brothers. Those sorts of girls lived and thrived in every corner of the world. They were as easy to pick out as criminals in a ballroom. As he got close though, as she smiled up to him when he brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek, he felt a hopeful sadness that tugged at him in his stomach. And as he saw her frequently thereafter, he felt the distinct need to gather her up; leash her and collar her so she could never stray. He felt things he couldn't and wouldn't ever articulate to another soul, and especially never to her. He felt love and it made him ill._

After her shift at the coffee house, Danielle had come home sleepy, only to be met by a house pulsing with the energy of her children. She unlocked her front door and stepped inside, trading the crisp night air for the warmth and the battery of noise that they created. There was nothing more comforting. Happy's mother was sitting on the couch; distant, quiet, and smiling. Danielle kissed her on the cheek. She had lived with them ever since she fell ill. As much as she required care from Danielle, she gave back in so many ways with cooking and childcare and warm presence that it would be hard to not have her around now that they had become used to her. She was dying ever so slowly, a thought that depressed Danielle almost to the point of debilitation if she let herself think about it too deeply. Happy had moved her in from Bakersfield and demanded Danielle take care of her shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer, a concept that had been awkward at first as they had met only briefly before that. But, they had seamlessly assimilated her into their home, and the thought of her leaving left Happy and Danielle both bereft.

Not that Happy was home these days. That was a wound that was even harder to deal with; so, in true fashion, Danielle pushed that shit down and refused to dwell deeply on it. She'd go crazy if she allowed those feelings to come up. She pulled her hair up messily, cooking a large dinner of chile colorado, beans, and chorizo. She kissed her children multiple times and talked to them like they were her best friends and there was nothing more interesting in the world to her, which had become a profound truth recently. When life with Happy was still in full swing, she had been a distant and complacent mother, doing what was expected of her and loving her children as much as she should, but never feeling anything beyond that. When everything pushed her and Happy apart, she clung to the children and the home they'd created like a life raft, with both hands. She'd taken it all for granted for so long. She'd been so selfish, careless, and worst of all, indifferent. When she'd pushed him far enough to turn away from her, he'd awoken passion for domesticity and motherhood in her that was unparalleled. It was too little too late, and she suffered it day and night.

The shock of her first pregnancy came not long after they had become exclusive, and it was even heavier when they found out they were having twins. In April of 2005 Jacob and Salome came into their world, kicking and screaming, changing every detail of their lives but generally not affecting the overall trajectory. Happy was still headlong into Club business and Danielle resumed smoking and drinking as soon as she could quit nursing without feeling like a bad mother. Jacob was 7 minutes older than his sister. At 8 years old, they were stoic, cold, and commanding. They shared a bond nobody could touch. Every time Jacob saw his father he drank in his every move and mirrored it in every moment for weeks. He looked so much like Happy sometimes, it made Danielle want to scream or cry. Salome looked like Danielle, but she had the quiet strength of her father, an authoritative presence Danielle envied and admired.

Two years later she gave birth to Scarlett, and two years after that she gave birth to her son Jerome. He was a difficult delivery. She couldn't bring herself to get on birth control, and Happy couldn't bring himself to stop bedding his wife, and so the children continued to come. Their four babies had added an appetizing 10 pounds onto her, a 10 pounds evenly dispersed and a sign of maturity in her own mind. Somehow, the prospect of quitting her ascension of children seemed like defeat, and it seemed like an ending and frankly, it made her feel unbearably old. The only reason she wasn't pregnant now was because her husband had quit visiting her bed. She would give anything to have another one of his children growing inside of her now, and invariable link that couldn't be severed by his coldness and his absence. As distant as she could be emotionally, she loved their children hollering and crawling around. It was a security blanket she couldn't abide giving up.

Danielle pushed the stray hair out of her face and behind her eyes, commanding the children to leave the kitchen as she opened the window above the sink, letting the muggy west coast air waft through and cool her down exponentially. The sounds of the neighborhood reminded her of him. A dog barking, a trash can being drug out; a car idling in front of a house, the low hush and murmur of voices leaving much to the imagination. Andrea, Happy's mother, sat in the living room watching cable TV, another noise that surrounded Danielle like a womb as she lit a joint, slinging the dish towel over her shoulder and blowing languid trains of smoke out of the kitchen window. The noises danced in her mind and another one registered, one that made her heart jump into her throat and pound noisily- the low rumble of a bike. Her husband coming home should have been common to her, but it was an event of great importance in her life these days. She put out her joint and waited for what seemed like endless moments for Happy to come in the door. She wasn't bold enough to greet him. Instead, she continued hand washing dishes and listened to the sound of him with playing with his children, laughing loudly with them on the floor, speaking quietly to his mother in Spanish. It wasn't until the children were in bed and his mother was nodding slowly out on the couch that Happy came into the kitchen.

The anxiety pooled in her stomach so potently it burned. Since her affair, and his subsequent affairs, when he looked at her she could tell all he saw was red. His affairs had been vast and numerous, but his lifestyle was accompanied with the fact that it shouldn't matter, that she should stand by him through all of them unwaveringly. Her transgression had been singular, fueled by emotions she thought she had understood; emotions she had believed justified at the time. They seemed so faulty and immaterial now she could hardly understand her own actions. They were irreversible, and she had ruined everything. It wasn't worth it to him to divorce her with the amount of children they'd created. It was less work to keep her around, the only reason she still held her place, surely. She fished and pried for signs that he still loved her, but they were becoming so scarce. She cast her eyes up to meet him as she walked towards her purposefully, his eyes dark. He rested his hand on the curve of her waist as he kissed her cheek perfunctorily, and she closed her eyes blissful and tilted her face up to his as he did, savoring the contact. She wanted so badly to reach out to him, to beg him to hold her, but she knew any attempt at that would be made in vain, and met by an intensely painful rejection she wasn't sure she could handle.

"There's dinner if you want some" she remarked coolly as he took his seat at the dining table in the kitchen. He acquiesced and she served him up, stepping out onto the patio to smoke a cigarette as he ate. She made a point to step back in before he finished and left, hoping to catch him seated and tame, and she was just lucky enough to.

He wiped his face off and set his napkin on his plate as she pulled a wooden chair up as close to him as she could get at the table. She took his hand in hers under the table, and he looked like it pained him, but he was too mild to pull it away. The contact made her desperate. She craved so much more. She felt like should would get on her knees and beg she missed him so much, but she couldn't lose her integrity. If she sacrificed her self-respect, he would be lost to her forever. He would never meet her eyes again.

"How is everything?" She asked earnestly, looking up to him, searching his eyes for direction. It was unspoken that she was referring to the Club, the life that constantly threatened to take him away from her. He met her eyes levelly, and she could see the struggle play out in them about whether he would lie to her or answer her truthfully. The latter won out. "Very messy" he replied evenly.

"I've been worried lately." Danielle admitted this conspiratorially. "I've got a bad feeling."

Happy looked towards her, his anger momentarily moved by a soft spot he would forever harbor for her. He rubbed her fingers calmly. "You don't need to worry. I'll take care of you." It was the same mantra he had chanted to her for ten years, and it never failed to calm her down. She had faith in his determination. His force of will was impeccable. She had to believe him when he told her it would be okay; she had to believe him or she would lose her mind with worry. She'd seen it happen to a few old ladies. You either learned to live with the fear, or you let it consume you. The shelf life for the women who were consumed was rather short within the Sons of Anarchy.

His lapse of anger encouraged her, and she squeezed his hand softly. "Please stay home tonight, baby. Please. I'll make it good, I promise." Happy turned his face, unable to listen. Danielle began to panic, knowing he hated to hear her beg in the slightest. She needed him home with her like she needed air to breath. She watched him with apprehension as he rubbed him face and pulled his hand from her grip. They locked eyes for a single moment, hers glistening and his icing over. She was frozen with anger as he shook his head at her, getting up from his chair and planting a too-hard kiss on her forehead. She was prostrate with resentment as he left through the front door, and she went to bed with redness swimming around in her head so feverishly she was surprised she didn't break any of their pictures lining their bedroom wall.


End file.
